“A
crew chief took the bag and jar with him on the flight.
They were going somewhere else. He asked me where in Iraq?
I said anywhere. I didn’t really care. He said, ‘How
about Basra?’ I asked him, ‘Are you crazy? I
mean they’re shooting helicopters down right and left,
and you’re going to stop for dirt?’ So he stopped
in Basra, just for the dirt. It was great for Common Ground
191, but not for him. That’s why I couldn’t
get his name. I know I made him nervous enough that he changed
his shirt when he came back to talk to me, because they
have their names on their shirts. A crew chief is a mechanic
who operates the guns, the big 50-caliber-plus guns on the
sides of the helicopter, but he’s also responsible
for maintenance of the helicopter.”

“What were his feelings
about doing the collection?”

“Oh, he was excited. Two crew chiefs were fighting over who was going to
do it. He loves art and he’s thinking (and I’m thinking) that maybe
I’m going to put a good word in for him with his boss.”

The speaker is an airline employee, a friend of Common Ground 191, who has requested
anonymity. When he found himself going near Iraq in January 2005, he sought someone
to collect soil in this inflammatory land.

“Basra is in the south of Iraq. It’s
not been a very active city as far as violence because British troops have been
there. It’s probably the closest
city to Kuwait in Iraq.”

“Are there any nicknames for that place?”

“I’m sure a lot people have a lot of names for it.”

“ Can
you describe the soil for me?”

“
To me, the soil looked like a combination of rock and sand. That’s how
I told the difference between them. The soil from Iraq had like hard stuff
in it, and Kuwait was sandy.”

“So it was an ‘underground’ project in Iraq?”

“Well, it was just a favor. I didn’t
expect them to stop. I thought wherever they were going they could just scoop
a little dirt. They decided where
to go pick it up. It was exciting . . . The Dutch troops were just leaving,
because they’re done, the Dutch. The elections are done; they’re
done. Nobody wants to be there. Now the British are going to put more troops
in in. They’re
replacing twelve hundred with six hundred . . .”
This was a conversation about dirt?

*
* *

Mesopotamia,
the land at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
has always been called “The Cradle
of Civilization,” because it is the
site of one of the world’s first civilizations, dating back to c.3500
B.C. Sumeria, Assyria and Babylonia were three of its ancient states. Later,
Baghdad
became the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, the center of the Arab world
during the 9th century, its golden age. Called Iraq today, this country is
the heart-shaped
centerpiece of the countries of Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria
and Turkey. The heart reclines on its side, perhaps weary of the all the
centuries
of warfare and destruction enacted on the soil which gave birth to human
culture.

Today a new ideological “baby” is being put into the “Cradle
of Civilization.” Only time will tell how the baby grows. In June 2004,
political sovereignty was placed in the Iraqi Interim Government and the democratic
election of its president, Ghazi al-Ujayl al-Yawr, was held in January 2005—the
same day Common Ground 191’s soil was being collected and shipped back
to the U.S. by the anonymous helicopter crew chief and our airline worker friend,
a notable coincidence.

The Republic of Iraq (Al Jumhuriyah al
Iraqiyah) is mostly desert, with
mountainous regions along the Iranian and Turkish borders in the north.
The area surrounding
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is low-lying grassland, the lower plain
including a fertile delta where the two rivers meet, forming the Shatt
al-Arab waterway,
which flows into the Persian Gulf. Iraq is a strategic location in so many
ways: historical, environmental, geographical and of course international.

If you remove the “S” from the word soil, you end up with “oil” and
it is oil, the underground “black gold,” which fuels Iraq’s
destiny today. And it was two underground, anonymous patrons of the arts who
added the soil of this dramatically changing region to Common Ground 191, garnered
on a most significant day in Iraq’s history, in perhaps the most adventurous
story in our journal. Iraq’s soil has always been and is still culturally
hallowed, and now that story becomes a unique part of our art project. Thank
you Mssrs. Anonymous.